They hatched — our first two

They hatched.

The first one came out on 23 July, at around 2pm. I had been checking the incubator far too often for far too many days, and then there it was — smaller than I expected, damp, and already climbing. The second followed this morning, 26 July at 9:49am, still half in the shell when I found it. Just under three days apart.

I want to be clear about what these two are, because it matters more to me than the excitement does. They came from the clutch of eggs that Asta and Liva’s breeder kindly gifted us. They are not from a pairing of ours. I don’t know their parents, so there is no lineage for me to claim, and I’m not going to invent one. What I can honestly say is that they were incubated in our care, they hatched here, and they are the first eggs I have ever incubated through to hatching.

Neither of them is for sale, and it will be a long while before anything here is. They are days old and weigh next to nothing. They’ll stay with us, in their own little setups, until they’re eating confidently and genuinely well-started — that’s the rule, and it isn’t going to bend for two geckos I’m this attached to.

They don’t have names yet. I keep calling them “the first one” and “the little one”, which is not going to survive much longer.

Honestly, the biggest thing I’ve taken from this week is how much I still have to learn. Reading about hatching and actually having a hatchling in your hand at 9:49 in the morning are not the same thing. I’m holding the excitement lightly and just watching them closely.

Our own first clutch is still ahead of us — further ahead than I’d thought, as it turns out — and this hasn’t made me want to rush it. If anything it’s made me want to get it right.

More soon, as it actually happens.

— raised with heart, by the breeder herself